Lament for a Son of Dalmasca
by Amorissy
Summary: Or "How to Mourn a Traitor".  Ashe cannot forget his face, he who sold her for peace.  A companion piece to "Unfortunate Duty".


**Warning: **Set during game events; spoiler warning for up to **and** including events of Raithwall's Tomb and the fate of the _Dreadnought Leviathan_.

**Author's Note: **Contains subtle Ashe/Vossler and Ashe/Basch. This piece was inspired by challenge 2.11 ("Five Things Fic") at ultima_arena over on Livejournal. Come play with us at ff_land! I'll put a link in my profile.

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><p>"<em>Look on what my haste has wrought. Did I act too quick? Or was your return too late?"<br>- Cpt. Vossler York Azelas_

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><p><strong>Lament for a Son of Dalmasca<strong>  
><em>or <em>**How to Mourn a Traitor**

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><p>The Dawn Shard is the only light that burns for Ashe in the darkness behind closed eyes. When night comes, for it always must, sleep is an elusive lover that whispers sweetly to her, lingering somewhere at the shadowed fringe of conscious thought. When all others have fallen to its lonely promise, she is kept awake, haunted by the weight of her burdens, left desperate, wanting, never to be claimed by the blissful embrace. And with her restlessness comes the light of the stone, shining and pulsing strong, drunk on mist and flame. Kindled to falseness with the willfulness of her embittered heart.<p>

Ashe cannot forget his face.

The dreadnought's fiery end, like a slaver's searing brand upon her every waking moment. His name rests unsaid like acid on her tongue, he who _sold_ her for peace. No one dares speak it, and yet his memory remains; his betrayal suffocates, and chases weaker heads and hearts away from her fury, intense in its absolution.

The stone lies course, cold and empty, a stark remembrance. Would that she could afford him no other.

She fights against his memory, she curses him, curses their cause, curses _herself._ A hundred times she'd die with her blade in hand if only to save herself from the burn of his betrayal; the hollow echo of his oaths still clings to her, a taint that will not wash away until her shoulders buckle and her wretched cleansing comes. Her eyes brim with the shame of her regret, each spent tear another treachery to leave her exhausted and unsatisfied and utterly without.

The dreams come eventually, for she is still a hume above all things and bound to fragile existence. Inevitable and unbidden, fitful sleep takes her, and in thrall to visions of princes and traitors, she is shaken to the very foundations of her resolve. Her dreams put her at the mercy of every doubt and gnawing fear that has found the deepest, most secret places of her mind, every black thought that has settled there in these long, hard years of mourning and bitter hate, and when she awakens with the first greys of dawn, she is so very, very tired.

The skin of insurgence is shed no more readily than a mantle of royalty, and she can be Amalia no more than she can be Ashe and oh, how she loathes this nullity. Her weakness shows, her hesitance clear. She knows it, and she struggles amidst the in between of were and are, of was and will be.

She feels the eyes on her. So patiently do her companions wait for her, and their complacency startles her at times, but then she sees it, that weariness in the shadows of their eyes that mirrors her own. As the sun rises over the city, this place of her birth that hides them so well, her companions take to the streets, seeking out the quarrels and the comforts that thrive here in abundance, within the desert's beating heart. One by one, they return to watch her, but without scorn or pity or indecision, and all else she cannot tell. She does not trust herself to recognise anything, for once she'd known a true knight's adherent determination and unerring fidelity, and then she'd watched unflinching as the flames burst and consumed the sky.

He does not leave her thoughts, shutting out all else but for the weight of the silver wrapped still around her finger, but fresh wounds are demanding, and old scars keep. Night comes. Sleep does not. He was ally, he was adviser, unfailing as he'd protected her, guided her – his death shimmers in the darkness behind her eyes. She opens them; the light of memory is slow to fade. She rises. The shadows swallow her whole.

Day is saturated by sun and sand, and she lingers alone in empty rooms, but by night, the little sanctuary comes alive with the scents and sounds of those who surround her, those who share with her a grudge and a hope and a cause, an enmity for the empire that has darkened their hearts. The traitor has left them nurturing their anger, not a soul among them untouched by the whims and passions of greater men. It will sustain them. It must.

Hidden away midst the merchants and their dusty wares, the bazaar below their safehouse flourishes in the late hours. The murmur rises from the street; the hot, heavy desert breeze, the breath of the city, stirs the curtains. It calls to her, the clamour of hawkers, the words and music and life.

It's not until she's a finger's reach away that beyond the veil she sees first the blade, naked steel glinting in the moonlight and market's glow. Her eyes adjust, the light that haunts her sleep gone, and she sees him on the balcony, kneeling before the blade of dead or dying order, laid at rest upon the wooden bannister. His knotted shoulders are bare but burdened, his vigil is silent for all that it is filled with the voices that were carried to the earth with the traitor, that final kiss of steel and blood and seeping mist.

She watches him, head bowed before the blade, watches through gauze that hazes the edges of the truth, softens betrayal with clouded eyes and moonlight. She slips outside, bare feet softly muted on the smooth, white sandstone, but the spell is broken with her intrusion, and suddenly the harsh clarity is upon her, the too-sharp angles of his dungeon ravaged body, the sword notched and dull, the city's music lost in the deafening rush of night's heady breeze.

Basch raises his head and a shuddering breath goes through him. He makes to stand, but there's a sound in the back of her throat, a protest no words can capture; he stills, and waits. She has nothing to offer him, and it is no easy thing as she crosses the balcony and lowers herself to her knees beside him. Her eyes don't leave the blade, where all the city's lights have sunken to gleam and wink like the brightest of stars.

Beside her, he lowers his head once more, given over to a quietude of body and soul she's never possessed. It's familiar, and it frightens her, the surge of memories better left scattered like leaves to bitter wind. That fierceness is still within her even now, the slow burn of an ageless anger and the weight and truth of duty pressing ever upon her. With eyes open, she sees naught but the bared blade, but she is not foolish enough to believe a refuge is to be found behind her eyelids, no, the stone waits there, not empty but blazing with power, taunting her until her eyes cry for mercy. To shut them is to know her fathomless shame.

A stone for a kingdom; no, truly, a stone for a life. A judge's blade, the pale column of a pirate's throat. A stone, just a stone, warm and luminous and heavy in her hand. For a life, for _their_ lives. For Dalmasca.

Not a drop spilled. It was no price to pay. She feels it, the blood and ash of her betrayer's end, the swirling mist and smoking ruin that devoured so many souls with greed and pride and folly.

It is then that the broken knight beside her begins to speak. His words are low, lacking eloquence, and yet she is bound from the first passing of breath from his lips. Her eyes lift from the blade's peaceful repose to look upon his face, weathered and tired and scarred by blood's betrayal. He takes no notice of her, his oath gruff and quiet and solemn, words that are etched upon him for an eternity, severed, taken, and now renewed. She knows of courage, and she knows of sacrifice; the fingers of her right hand touch upon her left, the last remnant of a love two years gone.

No soft remembrance for a traitor's failure, but for a dead stone and a cold blade.

When the knight beside her speaks of loyalty, she draws in a sharp breath. Never does he falter, through the glory of death in service, beyond gods' blessing and peace eternal. With no shame, he speaks finally the traitor's name, a whisper of a prayer that she echoes without hesitation, the sin of a single utterance lost to the city's discord.

And - and Ashe's world does not end with her acknowledgement of _him_, of his death or his crime. She keeps breathing, and with each life-kissed filling of her lungs, a moment of peace passes, so that upon every exhale, the iron grip of resentment and anger bearing down upon her heart lessens, and lessens, and lessens. Long moments of silence come and then go, and still she breathes, and lightens, and lives on.

Basch rises, and she allows him to pull her to her feet. He watches her. He shields himself. With distance, with respect and purpose. "Tomorrow," he presses upon her, a weak grasping for gentility, for he's uncertain. She is, herself, uncertain. "Tomorrow you must decide a course of action."

That his words are directed at her takes a moment to settle in, and she nods slowly. "Tomorrow," she repeats. The thought of the pale pinks of dawn fills her, the promise of the earliest hours of a new day, and as easily as sunrises sweeps over the desert sands, so too does fatigue creep through her heavy limbs. She leaves Basch there, to the wind and the street-noise and the blade of ancient order, his vigil incomplete.

The dawn will come, for it always must, and perhaps she should not fear the coming, nor the darkest hours foretold within the heart of the stone. She is not lost, and she is not broken, and though the stone is cold, and empty, it is still heavy in her hand, and a comfort, she finds, as she lays down. She is so very, very tired as she closes her eyes and _sleeps_.

That night, she dreams of Nabradia.


End file.
